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Looking at Billboard’s Hot R&B chart for July 19, 1986, brings back a flood of memories for me.

I remember dancing to Gwen Guthrie’s “Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ On but the Rent”, Jermaine Jackson’s “Do You Remember Me?” and Klymaxx’s “Man Size Love” (one of my all-time favorites). It was the summer Janet first got “Nasty”, El DeBarge asked who Johnny was, and Anita Baker praised the rapture of “Sweet Love”. Some of the best broken-hearted love songs ever recorded are ranked, from Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald’s “On My Own” and Atlantic Starr’s “If Your Heart Isn’t In It” to the epic “All Cried Out” by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam with Full Force.

And the number one song on the chart for the first of two weeks was “Rumors” by Timex Social Club. Sung by the impossibly cute Mike Marshall, “Rumors” had an irresistible dance beat and a rawness to its funk that made it sound different from anything else out there. The song, written by Marcus Thompson, Alex Hill, and Marshall, became a mainstream hit too, spending five months on Billboard’s Hot 100 and peaking at #8.

Granted, the lyrics seem somewhat hypocritical. The singer complains about rumors while spreading them at the same time. The song specifically name checks Tina Jackson, a student that went to Berkley High School with Thompson (“some say she’s much too loose”), Michael Jackson (“some say he must be gay”), and Susan Moonsie from Vanity 6 (“some say she’s just a tease”). Then again, it makes sense to provide examples to back up your argument.

Timex Social Club would have two more hits on the R&B chart, “Thinkin’ About Ya” and “Mixed Up World”, both of which peaked at #15, but they would never again appear on the Hot 100, making them a one-hit wonder. Still, “Rumors” holds up surprisingly well more than 20 years later, and Timex Social Club still performs regularly (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Pop history is littered with the remains of singles released by actors desperately craving careers in music, from the strained vocals of Don Johnson searching for a “Heartbeat” to the featherweight vocals of “Don’t Give Up on Us”, the cheesy (yet oddly touching) plea from David Soul. Eddie Murphy had two Top 40 hits, the instantly forgettable “Put Your Mouth on Me” and the major smash “Party All the Time”, both of which came across as bad vanity projects. Leighton Meester, Blair on Gossip Girl (The O.C. 2.0), is currently featured on the Top 10 hit “Good Girls Go Bad”, a Cobra Starship song that sounded dated five seconds after it first played on the radio.

It’s almost a rite of passage for actors. Once they’ve found success appearing in a television series or in movies, many of them immediately want to prove that they are more than just actors. So we get Bruce Willis recording a cover of “Respect Yourself” and John Schneider remaking “It’s Now Or Never” – not bad songs, per se, just not particularly memorable either.

Dancing with the Stars has recently released the names of the contestants for the new season, and questionable celebrity status aside, two of them are one-hit wonders (and one is an almost).

Macy Gray reached national prominence after “I Try”, the second release from her debut album, spent half a year on the Billboard Hot 100, eventually peaking at #5. The single won her a Grammy Award for “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” in 2001.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a featured role on the Black Eyed Peas’ “Request Line” (which stalled at #63), none of Macy’s subsequent singles have cracked the Hot 100. She has remained busy, however, acting in movies including Training Day and Lackawanna Blues in between recording albums. She has also guest starred on That’s So Raven, American Dreams, and other television series from time to time.

Alison Moyet, an incredibly gifted singer with a deep, rich, bluesy voice, first found fame in her early 20s. Joining forces with Vince Clarke, a former member of Depeche Mode, Alison formed Yazoo, a synth-dance band, in 1981.

Yazoo was a major success in England. Their first two albums, Upstairs at Eric’s and You and Me Both, peaked at #2 and #1 respectively on the record charts, and four of their singles became Top 15 hits. In the United States, the duo (renamed Yaz because an American rock band was already using the name) saw three of their singles become number one hits on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart, but they weren’t nearly as successful on mainstream radio.

Alison and Vince decided to disband Yazoo shortly before their second album was released.

Vince Clark went on to form Erasure with Andy Bell and had an astonishing 24 consecutive singles become Top 20 hits in the UK Alison Moyet began a solo career, and while her success hasn’t rivaled that of her former band mate (she’s had nine singles become Top 40 hits in England), she has never particularly strived for success on the radio. Instead, she has gloriously followed her own path.

The only real success Alison Moyet has had as a solo artist in the United States is with a song titled “Invisible” that became a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 4, 1985. But that song was enough to make me a lifelong fan.

In 1988, Sinead O’Connor released The Lion and the Cobra, her critically-acclaimed debut album. Rolling Stone called her one of the women “shattering the boundaries of pop music”, but the album peaked at #36 on the Billboard 200 and none of her singles charted in the United States.

Then she recorded “Nothing Compares 2 U”, a cover of a Prince song originally released on The Family’s self-titled album, and everything changed. The video was mesmerizing, combining gothic imagery with a tight close-up on her face that gave the song a transcendent power. “Nothing” eventually spent four weeks at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and propelled the I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got album to become a double platinum, number one bestseller.